SPJ-62
Reviewed by:
imsimon, on february 14, 2008 0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Features: Not sure what year it was made, very recently I do believe. Spanish company, bass made in China, shipped over to the UK from the USA. 20 frets, Solid Alder body with a maple neck & rosewood fretboard. "Vintage White" paint on the body, and Orange stained neck. The colours of this bass are the only bits I don't like apart from the neck. The neck sets off to be a typical chunky "P-Bass" neck, but past the 5th fret, the chunkiness falls away, and towards the bottom the fretboard is too wide for my liking. The frets aren't consitant, and some are higher than others. It came with stainless steel strings which are too bright for my liking, but I'll be replacing them soon enough. No accesories included, just the bass, a cardboard box and lots of tape. // 6

Sound: What a surprise! The Alder and stock pickups give out a really nice tone, and combined with the steel strings I've found a sort of Funk style tone out of it. But I can also get a lot of other tones from it too, such as punk/metal/rock/pop punk, really versitile for a P-Bass, most likely down to the extra J-pickup. I thought, considering the price, the pickups would be awful, but they actually are quite good, a bit quiet though. There's only a slight bit of buzz coming from the pickups at full volume, but nothing major. I use this at college and at home, and it sounds great on all three amps I've played it through so far, from a Laney keyboard amp, to a Laney fullstack, to my Marshall B150. This sounds amazing for such a cheap bass, the tone actually rivals the Fender Mex P-Bass I've been using for a while! // 10

Action, Fit & Finish: The bass seems to be held together pretty well. The routing on the pickups isn't what you would call precise at all, there's some major gaps around them. Also the split coil pickup isn't set in properly and wobbles about when you touch it, but who's going to come up and wobble your pickups? It's currently needing a few tweaks on the innotation and I want to raise the action a bit as it's quite low, but that's personal preference really. // 5

Reliability & Durability: Although I've only had this bass a day, it feels like it's not planning on falling apart or giving up without a good fight. The tuning pegs seem solid and good quality, and don't instantly go out of tune like I thought they would. I brought it home on the bus from college, stopping off in town, and got it out about half an hour after getting home, and it was still pretty much in tune, which was impossible for my old Peavey to do. I'd gig this without a backup without a doubt although I'm going to have straplocks on at all times, just cause I'm paranoid. I've just gave my strap a good tug and it's stayed on well. The finish on the neck looks as though it'll fade after a few weeks or so, but frankly I can't wait fot that to happen! The paintwork on the body looks solid though. // 9

Overall Impression: I play pretty much everything in and out of college. Mainly rock in my band, Metal and Pop Punk when I'm just sat at my computer, but lately we've been working on Jazz type stuff for the college course. I've got the bass to adapt to all of these tones really well, although I really want to change the strings over as they're just too bright. Overall this bass has really surprised me, as it was just a cheap bass to tide me over while I save for a Fender jazz, but I can see me having this a lot longer than I was planning. I think it could easily compete with higher end Squire basses and other basses around the 300 mark. // 9